


Flora and Fauna

by gardnerhill



Series: Malamute [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Across three Aprils.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flora and Fauna

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2012 Watson's Woes July Prompt: Your next jwp is to theme around one of the four seasons; winter, summer, spring, or fall.

1919

The kitchen-gardener was a one-armed man in his thirties with a Surrey accent and half his face burnt off by phosphorus. He and Watson got along like thieves in a den, and Dav was happy to accept the older man's assistance hoeing the tender young cabbages and beans, or steadying the ladder whilst he pruned the roses that engulfed the east wall. They talked together and they were silent together – and the day he was far across the field inspecting the hives for the new year Holmes saw that one, if not both, were weeping. Rough choruses of "Are You the O'Reilly?" often accompanied the work now – a change for both of them, for Dav had been nearly mute before and Watson silent about his past four years.

The spring thunderstorms were still bad, but Holmes had men from the town turn the gazebo into a lean-to of sorts, well-sheltered from the rain but open-faced to the sea. When Watson had a bad night he slept out there, or wrote while rain drummed its friendly greeting on thick wood and lightning only illuminated peaceful countryside. 

Not until the cowslips began to fade and the buttercups take over did Holmes realize that Watson's "visit" had never ended. He said nothing. Watson said nothing, his hands now acquiring the calluses and ingrained dirt of a gardener, and the hives hummed with joy. 

***  
1920

Dav's sister was Margaret, a brawny young black-haired thing (so many of the girls were these days, it was no time to be timid or frail when the only hale men were old ones like themselves). She and her brother worked the same trade, but her joy was flowers. She was a little afraid of the bees, but when she saw that they only had roses and native flowers she was scandalized, and told Holmes so. She brought in clover and heather and rosemary and everything that makes different honeys, and Watson helped her plant them. 

Holmes hired more men from town to tear down the gazebo shed and build a proper room addition on that side of the house, whose main feature was an insulated roof to muffle the rain and a great glass door. It became Watson's room, and he now slept surrounded by green growing things and an unhampered view of the sea. 

It was on another rainy night in that room, so dark save for the thunder flashes that they could not see each other's faces, that Watson finally began to tell Holmes what it had been like, and what he had done, and what he had seen. Holmes held his friend's hand all night, and made no sound while the front of his dressing-gown dampened. And the next morning, his cheeks still stiff from the salt tracks he'd made, Holmes busied himself with the tea things to hide his cheek-aching smile as Watson spoke peacefully about the beds of borage and white clover Margaret and he wanted to get in once the rain let up. 

*** 

1925

The gardener and his wife who tended to old Mr. Holmes were a strangely-matched couple (so many strange couples in these days), but between them and the bees they had turned a pretty cottage and its grounds into a bower fit for a fairy-queen; the honey flowed like rain-water and the constant humming was the perfect chorus to the fragrance of the garden. 

Holmes had felt a pang at losing his lodger (for the same old reason, ha!) – but he needn't have worried this time. John and Margaret Watson spent as much time at the Sussex cottage as they did in the home they shared in Alfriston – which was a ten-minute walk for a retired consulting detective with a bad hip. And, to be perfectly and painfully truthful, Holmes cherished his solitude and was glad to attain his equilibrium once more in his apiary and his quiet house, with the lovely sea-view room that had become the Watsons' guest-quarters. 

Holmes had delivered the groom safely to his intended with a tart rejoinder at his old friend's one moment of insecurity ("You're an old man with a fortune – she'd be a fool to jilt you, Watson"). Some biddies sneered and twittered at such a May-December pairing, but Mrs Watson merely smiled and shocked them further by becoming the first woman in town to get her hair bobbed. Watson didn't stop laughing about that for days. 

Watson laughed, and for that alone Sherlock Holmes would have covered Margaret in gold if she'd have held still for it; he settled for giving her carte blanche to plant what and where she saw fit, cost be damned. Which is why the cottage also acquired a greenhouse and an orange tree. It was April once again, and the odor from the white blossoms was almost sweet and heavy enough to drink when you walked in. 

There were chores to be done these days – inspecting the hives, removing the broken frames, seeing if the brood boxes were sound. Watson helped, sometimes, when he was over, even if he had the annoying habit of cooing to the bees as if they were infants in prams whilst he lifted frames out.  
"We'll have to cover the hives as well as the car," Holmes said casually. "We'll have a thunderstorm tomorrow." 

"Mm," Watson said, humming some ghastly new tune. "Wouldn't be April without them."


End file.
